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Architect Resigns in Protest over UCSB Mega-Dorm

independent.com

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Re: Architect Resigns in Protest over UCSB Mega-Dorm

#661

Post by supperburg »

chasing wrote: post #653
supperburg wrote: post #624

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tax yourself all you want, it won’t solve the problem. The numbers simply don’t work. A wealthy man but not a learned man.

Apparently I’m not learned enough to know to avoid debating random doofuses on the internet. I’ll give you that.

Taxing people won’t make housing cheaper, it has nothing to do with the healthcare crisis and it won’t fix political corruption. Limousine liberals such as you are disconnected from reality and think that the solution to everything is to throw money at it.

Re: Architect Resigns in Protest over UCSB Mega-Dorm

#662

Post by rsj_hn »

chasing wrote: post #656
rsj_hn wrote: post #654

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is how you get to a place where college education is triple the cost of the rest of Europe (and much worse in quality), healthcare is double the cost and much worse in quality, and housing is skyrocketing. "But I thought subsidizing these things would make them cheaper! Here, take more of my money!!" Here's a life pro-tip: When you are spending too much on something, the solution is to spend less , not more .

The idea of paying taxes to help support the people around them truly drives some people nuts. It’s a shame.

The idea that a solution might not require an increase in taxes truly drives people nuts. It's a shame because it explains why the US government spends so much more on education and healthcare than other nations, yet we have such terrible outcomes. But when the only button you are willing to consider is "spend more!", then that's what you end up with -- a broken, bloated, system that is massively overfunded and that massively under-delivers.

I bet you're the type of person that sees a massive, broken software project and just declares "we need to spend more on this to deliver it ontime! Hire more people!"

But hey, maybe I'm wrong. 20% of the nation is employed in delivering healthcare, so if we increase that to 40%, maybe then we'll solve the problem. We must spend more, it's the moral thing to do! We spend triple the OECD on tertiary education, but hey, we really should bump that up to 6x and then we'll finally fix it!

Re: Architect Resigns in Protest over UCSB Mega-Dorm

#663

Post by Accujack »

bmitc wrote: post #627

People are discussing this design as if it is an actual design worthy of discussion. What it is is the product of a bum amateur "architect" wanting to feed his narcissism and legacy who just happens to be a billionaire. That and universities that have become slaves to money and fundraising. Charles Munger is apparently one of Buffet's cronies at Berkshire Hathaway. It's telling that the committee was basically not in…

*edit: I did just realize, however, that the floor plan for this dorm might make an excellent layout for a large number of bedrooms in a game of Dwarf Fortress.

--------

Agreed. His assumptions seem questionable... the whole design is built around the idea that forcing students to interact is objectively good. Even ignoring the pandemic, there's no justification for this other than his assumptions that it's somehow "good".

He's apparently also given talks on psychology: https://fs.blog/great-talks/psychology-human-misjudgment/

He's published (or caused to be published) a book containing his "Wit and Wisdom": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poor_Charlie%27s_Almanack

He's a Billionaire Republican, and that alone is enough to condemn him in the present day. He does also seem to be one hell of a narcissist.

This guy is 97... he was 16 years old at the outbreak of World War II. If he has any idea what it's like to be an undergraduate, that knowledge is dated 1946.

But UCSB can't seem to turn money away, even for an obvious vanity project, because Billionaire Republican.

Re: Architect Resigns in Protest over UCSB Mega-Dorm

#664

Post by Accujack »

tim333 wrote: post #638
bmitc wrote: post #627

People are discussing this design as if it is an actual design worthy of discussion. What it is is the product of a bum amateur "architect" wanting to feed his narcissism and legacy who just happens to be a billionaire. That and universities that have become slaves to money and fundraising. Charles Munger is apparently one of Buffet's cronies at Berkshire Hathaway. It's telling that the committee was basically not in…

As mentioned elsewhere Munger has already built one of these things and it has proved pretty popular.

And as mentioned elsewhere, this is an apples and vaguely apple-like fruit comparison.

Re: Architect Resigns in Protest over UCSB Mega-Dorm

#665

Post by diogenescynic »

tim333 wrote: post #638
bmitc wrote: post #627

People are discussing this design as if it is an actual design worthy of discussion. What it is is the product of a bum amateur "architect" wanting to feed his narcissism and legacy who just happens to be a billionaire. That and universities that have become slaves to money and fundraising. Charles Munger is apparently one of Buffet's cronies at Berkshire Hathaway. It's telling that the committee was basically not in…

As mentioned elsewhere Munger has already built one of these things and it has proved pretty popular.

It was much smaller… and this has even fewer bathrooms per student.

Re: Architect Resigns in Protest over UCSB Mega-Dorm

#666

Post by diogenescynic »

anonuser123456 wrote: post #625
some_random wrote: post #557

Watching old people solve the "problem" of young people not socializing enough by turning their living quarters into a prison is exactly the sort of thing I've come to expect.

Munger is more interested in figuring a way to not heap mountains of debt on students. The cost of building everyone’s dream college experience is one of the reasons people are paying 50-70k/ year for college. If this design shaves off 10k/year in costs that’s a down payment on a condo. Maybe that tradeoff seems unreasonable to people. But the ability to see and make those kinds of trade offs is… just maybe… one of t…

300k per room for living conditions worse than jail cells. This is just dumb and not economical.

Re: Architect Resigns in Protest over UCSB Mega-Dorm

#667

Post by salawat »

craftinator wrote: post #580
daun wrote: post #559

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Either several of those positive reviews are fake, or those MBA students are functionally illiterate.

I've met several MBA's, and they are more 'partially literate' in that they can write huge quantities of stuff, but each paragraph has nothing to do with the last paragraph. Similarly, they can read whole books very quickly, but they do so by reading just the first sentence on every page. This is what gives them the superpower of reading large technical emails, and responding to them in seconds about a completely unr…

God, this annoys the crap out of me. People say I write novels in my emails, so I tried breaking things up once for an MBA. It resulted in a dozen or so emails that when concatenated would equal the "novel" they'd have originally complained about.

Lesson learned: MBA's seem to value incomplete communication, and email headers over a condensed explanation of what's actually relevant.

Re: Architect Resigns in Protest over UCSB Mega-Dorm

#668

Post by salawat »

kixiQu wrote: post #548
Syzygies wrote: post #440

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There were cholera epidemics in the 19th century, until we realized we shouldn't drink contaminated water. In cities such as London, this required major infrastructure investments. We're just realizing we shouldn't breathe contaminated air, and we're just realizing that we need to make infrastructure investments. CO2 is a good proxy for infectious disease transmission risk. We breathe out CO2 as we spread pathogens.…

> just realizing we shouldn't breathe contaminated air Well.... https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-08-05/the-curio...

Hahahahahaha.

This is exactly the type of information that gets lost between generations that makes past decisions make sense. It's why I ferverently collect older academic/engineering literature. Not necessarily for the equations, but for some of the context around the problems and challenges of the time we no longer think about because they are "already solved".

Everyone moans about radiators once you start sealing up windows to be more green. Surprise! They were designed with the inefficiency of having an open window in mind for health and ventilation purposes since the turn of the century! Of course you end up with problems when you violate a functional invariant!

Re: Architect Resigns in Protest over UCSB Mega-Dorm

#669

Post by salawat »

celtain wrote: post #589
yardie wrote: post #444

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll wait for the medical profession to tell me the cure for a major ailment is a windowless, tightly enclosed space with limited circulation.

Has the medical profession told you that your current housing situation cures a major ailment?

Yes. Homelessness. It's a bit of a barely worth saying, but it's there.

Re: Architect Resigns in Protest over UCSB Mega-Dorm

#670

Post by PebblesRox »

danso wrote: post #470
tomtheelder wrote: post #404

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> there appears to be 1 bathroom per 8 suites That looks like two bathrooms per 1 suite, or 1 bathroom per 4 rooms. I never shared a bathroom with less than 3 other people in my four years at college, so that doesn't seem particularly out of the ordinary for an undergraduate dorm. The difference in size of rooms seems significant, though.

Looks like it's might be 2 bathrooms based on this tiny floorplan image [0], I thought from the isometric image it was 1.5 (2 toilets, 1 shower). And it looks like there's maybe 2 common area toilets. The ratio seems fine in theory...I think my undergrad dorm floor had 2 communal bathrooms with 8 toilet stalls and 8 showers for 30-35 residents. I'm assuming intersuite sharing would become normal. The podsize also isn…

I don't see any closets or space for a dresser on those plans either. Where are students supposed to keep their clothes? Under-the-bed drawers?
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